"It's about a family/camping trip/plane ride/small organization's election process/etc... but really it's about... SOCIETY!"
As above, so below.
I love stories that take a contained micro model of human behavior and then successfully uses them to make macro observations about the way we socially organize.
This list could get pretty broad. It's a thin line between what's a metaphor for society, and what's a depiction of a society itself. Bicycle Thieves is not a metaphor. It's a depiction, yet in my brain it makes the list when so many other movies about the struggles of poverty do not. ("It's about a father stealing a bicycle, but... it's really about SOCIETY!")
There's lots of debatable examples like this below. So we'll…
"It's about a family/camping trip/plane ride/small organization's election process/etc... but really it's about... SOCIETY!"
As above, so below.
I love stories that take a contained micro model of human behavior and then successfully uses them to make macro observations about the way we socially organize.
This list could get pretty broad. It's a thin line between what's a metaphor for society, and what's a depiction of a society itself. Bicycle Thieves is not a metaphor. It's a depiction, yet in my brain it makes the list when so many other movies about the struggles of poverty do not. ("It's about a father stealing a bicycle, but... it's really about SOCIETY!")
There's lots of debatable examples like this below. So we'll just throw a bunch of great movies on here and perhaps future comments will convince me to knock some off and refine the list.
What we're looking for is contained narratives that illuminate human social structures without running straight at that theme.
("It's about [X], but it's really about... SOCIETY!")
Yet another list in progress. Let's see your suggestions.